Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Martinez, CA.

Anxiety is a paradox: the harder we try not to feel anxious, the more anxious we get. Similar to chinese finger cuffs, the intuitive solution to anxiety - trying to control what we think or feel - doesn't work. I offer therapy that helps clients avoid this trap and use state of the art CBT and mindfulness tactics to help clients move through and past anxiety.

My approach to working with anxiety and stress management is integrative. I like to incorporate the use of mindfulness, breath work, guided imagery and body-based therapies as well as a psychodynamic and experiential approach to help uncover potential underlying causes for the anxiety and stress. With this kind of approach, I've helped clients feel calmer, more relaxed and more in control of their reactions to daily stressors and experiences.

Depression, anxiety, excessive worry, and challenges in relationships are rooted in insufficient emotional attunement in formative years. After providing you practical and effective tools that lower anxiety and reduce stress symptoms in the moment; I focus on really attuning to your experience and helping you experience being accepted. As our relationship develops, I find it normal that you will internalize an internal ability to experience yourself as acceptable. After this happens, you will find that the normal "pain in the ass life experiences" that you find will still be there, but you will have a different sense of self that will allow you to navigate them a deeper sense of self!

When people become disconnected from themselves and from their bodies due to overwork, chronic relational conflicts, or inattention to bodily signals of fatigue, it is not uncommon for them to experience high levels of stress and anxiety. I work with my clients to help understand what these symptoms of stress and anxiety are trying to communicate to them and to help them to listen. I am trained in both depth psychotherapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, so I use both of these approaches to help my clients understand what they may be repeating from their past that may be contributing to their high levels of stress and anxiety and to help them to be more mindful in the present moment.

Anxiety and stress are felt when life overwhelms the capacity to experience. When events are too much to bear, too much to make sense of, or tolerate, we feel stress or anxiety. If unable to be with challenging life events we are left in this anxious state, held hostage by what cannot be digested or made sense of. I help people decrease stress and anxiety by increasing their ability to more fully inhabit themselves and be with their own experiences so that events of the past and present can be lived in and more comfortably felt. A sense of self, self-confidence, capacity, and control is restored.

If you suffer from anxiety in any form—including panic attacks, insomnia, having a generally nervous predisposition, experiencing a kind of anxious depression, or general lifestyle stress—the good news is that these are very treatable conditions. By teaching you mindfulness and breathing techniques, as well as using other modalities and working directly with the underlying source of anxiety, I'll help you learn to self-regulate when you're feeling anxious, and teach you how to relate to your anxiety differently, allowing you to feel more natural states of ease and well-being.

I work with my clients to help them understand the differences between stress and anxiety. In both cases, I practice supportive, interactive psychotherapy in which I help my clients become insightful about the sources of their stress or anxiety. In treating anxiety disorders, I have found Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and/or a gradual approach to Exposure Therapy to be helpful. I generally refer my clients who suffer from anxiety to a colleague psychiatrist, with whom I work collaboratively, for medication management. In working with my clients who present with either disorder, I often teach strategies like meditation, relaxation training and journaling as a part of my therapeutic approach.

We will look at what contributes to your anxiety and stress. You will learn to manage your anxious thoughts and behaviors better. You develop practical skills and self awareness. I will help you challenge your habitual negative thinking and find ways to self sooth, and self regulate. You will feel more connected, calm, and confident. You will develop more inner peace and self acceptance benefitting you in all areas of your life.

Anxiety and stress can be debilitating at times. Having a safe place to talk about your stress and learning safe ways to cope is a place to start. Sometimes stress is in relation to family, work, friends, relationships that we long to have work well. We can look at these areas and develop better ways of coping and communicating so that relationships are a source of security and comfort.

To be human is to feel anxious at different point throughout the day. However, when stress and anxiety becomes too high medical attention and/or therapy is needed to regulate your nervous system. I have a CBT and mindfulness based approach to high levels of anxiety. The combination of CBT and mindfulness based practices will allow us to see what is activating your stress and increasing your anxiety as well as, concrete tools you can practice to reduce anxiety in your life.

Whether you struggle with social, financial or virtually any other form of anxiety, through supportive therapy, meditation practices, cognitive-behavioral work and various forms of trance work (such as voice dialogue, imagery and hypnosis) I am very effective at helping people better manage stress and reduce anxiety. I have practiced meditation for 45 years and various stress-reduction techniques for over 30 years.

Often, anxiety comes up because of a narrative of negative or repetitive thoughts. These thoughts are usually related to an idea about the past or the future. Once you are aware of your thoughts patterns you can develop tools to manage these thoughts to reduce and even eliminate anxiety. I will teach you Cognitive Behavioral Techniques and Stress Management Exercises to help with this process. Some clients also benefit from having an Emotional Support Animal as part of their treatment plan. I structure each treatment plan according to each client's individual needs.

Anxiety and stress are actually two different things. Where stress usually comes from actual and identifiable challenges, anxiety tends to be more arbitrary in that there isn't necessarily one specific cause. However, both anxiety and stress tend to develop based on one's specific context--that is what one has experienced through their lifetime. While some anxiety and stress is actually good for us (i.e. propels us toward action), excessive amounts can create both emotional and physical challenges. I work with clients from a top-down/bottom-up approach, working to help the brain to better control the bodily effects of stress and anxiety and the body to control the brain.